


The Stars Did Wander Darkling

by Maidenjedi



Category: The Stand - Stephen King
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:01:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26457628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maidenjedi/pseuds/Maidenjedi
Summary: The wasteland of dreamers who never made it anywhere, and one who did, in the end.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 8
Collections: King of Exchanges 2020





	The Stars Did Wander Darkling

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Edonohana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edonohana/gifts).



> I had a dream, which was not all a dream.  
> The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars  
> Did wander darkling in the eternal space....  
> \- Lord Byron, "Darkness"

Gail was a hairdresser, in her former life. That’s how she planned to introduce herself, should she actually meet anyone on her way west.

It was true, as far as it went. She’d been in beauty school – three times. And she was three times a dropout. 

The first time, she’d dropped out after meeting Lance. Lance was the running back for the local high school (state championship winning) team. He never let you forget it. For the first few months, it was heaven, wearing his letterman jacket and eating for free at the diner where everyone knew him. He told her he’d take care of her, she didn’t need to work. He gave her a ring.

He cheated, and that was it for him.

Back to beauty school, then, and making something of herself.

Two more dropouts, both for guys. The second time she’d been knocked up, and he – his name was Chuck, and you can guess what his nickname was - left. Babies weren’t his thing, he said, and frankly, they weren’t Gail’s, either. The third time, well. The third time was almost worth it, almost, except he’d liked Gail’s friend Mark a lot better than Gail herself.

She’d had plans, big plans, to open her own salon. She was signing the loan paperwork to go back to school a fourth time when the bank employee sitting across from her sneezed.

That was only three weeks ago, and now the bank employee, and his coworkers, and her roommate Lilah and Lilah’s daughter, and her mom, and and and and and.

Dead, to a one.

Gail had her first dream the night after Lilah’s daughter died. _He_ came to her. He was tall like Lance, and she thought maybe he was handsome like Mark. She couldn’t tell, his face would shift just as she decided who it was he looked like. It didn’t matter. He told her she could be happy, she could have everything she’d ever dreamed of. She only needed to come to him.

 _West_.

Sometimes she dreamed of crows, great black birds lining a highway on the swooping power lines, cawing out her name and the names of her friends and lovers in an endless way. She saw neon, shining out over a desert night. 

One night, just one, she dreamed of a field of corn, and a rocking chair on a porch. Boring, ridiculous midwestern shit, and an old woman who said something, only it was drowned out by the cawing and cackling of every kind of black bird imaginable, swarming the fields and pecking out the woman’s eyes.

If Gail were honest, it was the one time she’d been a bit scared.

But west she went, following I-10, hoping to meet someone – and hoping she didn’t, truthfully. She dreamt of the tall man and they were wet dreams. She wanted to see him, and she wanted him.

But the motorcycle she rode (just like the one Lance used to have) died on the third morning, spilling Gail over a bridge, and she caught up with Lilah and her mom and even Lance and Mark in the depths below.

On the bridge, the motorcycle’s wheel spun, and a black bird perched on the handle.

-

All night long, the crows.

On billboards and bales of hay. On street signs, all of them in a dream-language she couldn’t read. Cawing and cackling. Pecking at grain. At carrion.

Crows, ravens, grackles. Four and twenty blackbirds, baked in a pie.

Laura went mad with, the noise and the smell, birds all around her. She dreamed of them, she saw them in her yard, she was followed by the bastards.

She went mad, and stumbled, and knew no more.

Blessed, blessed quiet.

-

“Valerie Kopeckny,” breathed a man in jeans and boots. He had long hair and wore a smiley face button.

Valerie hated smiley face buttons. 

She wasn’t alone, in her small Mississippi town. No, there were four others she knew were alive. Hedda Jenkins, Elliott Laney, M’Lynn Theriot, and that guy who used to bum cigarettes off her in high school, Matt maybe, or Merv. They’d gotten together, the four of them, and were holed up in the old Theriot mansion. Well. A mansion by _some_ standards, anyway.

They didn’t know about Valerie. Everyone in town assumed Valerie had died, because her husband and all six of their children had died. And Valerie didn’t let people think different, after that happened, though there weren’t many even then who would have come knocking to see how she was.

She’d spied the others around town, looting the grocer’s and the pharmacy, the Dollar General on Sixth. She had thought about revealing herself, joining them, especially when she saw M’Lynn and Elliott carrying camping gear back from the feed store. Going somewhere, anywhere, getting the hell out of this town was all Valerie had wanted for longer than she remembered.

But then she had that dream. _Him_.

_“They’re going somewhere you don’t want to be, Valerie. Somewhere small, somewhere backward. A place where they won’t understand you. I understand. Come here.”_

_Here_ was revealed over several more dreams, and Valerie had always wanted to go to Vegas.

She might have made it, too, if she hadn’t tripped down the last three stairs, and broken her ankle in three places. Having no phone and no one left in the world who knew she was even there, Valerie died of thirst and frustration.

She went somewhere, in the end, she didn’t want to be.

-

Natasha Henderson dreamt of the old woman. She knew it was Hemingford Home, she knew the old woman was kind and gentle. Her dreams were vivid, almost lucid; she’d wake with the smell of freshly fried chicken and hot apple pie in her nose.

She dreamt of the old woman for a week. She made up her mind, she would go to Nebraska and find the old woman.

But Natasha also made up her mind to hunt for her food that last morning, only to find, sometimes the food comes hunting for you.

-

She’d never been a dreamer, until Captain Trips.

It was nightmares, when they finally came. Nightmares of her boyfriend choking in a hospital hallway, while she held his hand and screamed for the doctor who never came. Nightmares of the piles of bodies outside that same hospital, coming to life as she walked by, grabbing at her, begging her to save them.

They grew in scope. She had nightmares of places she’d never seen, fields of corn on fire, buildings in cities tumbling to the ground in ash and smoke. She dreamt of the neon in Las Vegas, and a nuclear bomb, the mushroom cloud over the desert.

She dreamt, at long last, of a man walking under a bright full moon at night. His bootheels clicked on the pavement and echoed as though against canyon walls.

“ _Follow_.”

And she did. 

When she arrived, the moment she kissed his boots, those boots that had clicked their way across so many roads, every nightmare she’d had flashed before her eyes, and worse. She saw her own bones, drying in the desert sun, stretched on a crucifix.

“ _Mine_.”

She was gone.

-

The dead walked. 

That was the explanation Beth had for what she witnessed on the road West.

She was not going to Vegas. She was not going to Nebraska. Beth had dreamed many dreams, and she was unimpressed by the lot.

She was also, truth be told, a coward.

She wanted to wait, and see who won.

She hid from them, the dead. The people who walked or rode past her house. In dribs and drabs, as her mother would say, and then in a right flood, they came. 

All west. Every man Jack of them, west.

Beth wondered where they’d come from, what made them choose that way to go. If they’d had dreams, and they must have, why would they choose this path?

But Beth couldn’t answer the question, having no desire in her to choose _any_ path. She knew where it all led, you see. She’d _dreamed_ of it.

A great big war, jets and tanks and that nightmare vision of every child of certain age, the mushroom cloud.

So they were dead, walking.

And she was alive, as far as it went. She would stay that way, right here, in her house.

She never heard or saw the snake in the garden.

-

“Who are you?”

She shrugged. “Don’t know. Who are you?”

“Layla.”

“Hi.”

“Hi. You don’t know your name?”

She laughed.

Layla frowned. “Are you okay? Did you hit your head?”

“Don’t think so.”

Layla was a nurse, in the before. She was a good one. She didn’t leave people who needed help. And this woman – this dirty, dazed-looking woman – clearly needed help.

So she took the woman’s hand, and led her to the house Layla had found that morning. She washed the woman’s hands, arms, face. She thought washing her hair was an intimacy neither was ready for. She gave the woman some food, a can of pork and beans and some of the stale bread that Layla’d found in the cabinets.

“Are you from here?”

The woman shrugged, then nodded. “Maybe. Probably. I think…I know this place. Some of the places around.”

“What do you remember?”

The woman put down her spoon, wiped her face with her forearm. 

“Dreams.”

Layla shuddered. The wind picked up outside.

“Dreams?”

“ _Him_.”

Him.

Layla drank her warm soda and considered. Him. 

“The desert, dark. And crows, sometimes thousands. But mostly. You know.”

Layla did know.

“Is it night?” said the woman, her voice very small.

“Not yet,” said Layla, turning to look out the window.

“When it’s night, it’s worse.”

Layla nodded.

They made it through the night. And the next day, went south.

-

_As far as the east is from the west…._

Scripture.

She was preparing for a sermon. She was going to preach on John. Jesus to Martha, I am the Resurrection and the life.

The resurrection and the life.

Kathy believed in both and yet these last days, she’d begun to doubt.

So she studied and read and prepared for a sermon no one would hear. No one, because her congregation had been devastated by Captain Trips. One Sunday, packed to the rafters. The next, a tentative, jittery crowd filled half the seats. By the next, not one soul walked through the doors.

Kathy had said so many prayers, presided over hasty funerals in backyards. She cried, so many tears, and waited for her own call home.

Not so much as a runny nose, though. It was July 6, and she was breathing just fine.

_She opened her notebook and picked up her pen. But outside her window, she saw smoke, and then flames, and then a face. A tall man, long hair, empty eyes._

_“Kathy. There’s nothing left to believe in but me.”_

_The fire leapt and her house was aflame._

_The window shattered and…._

She shook awake. Had she fallen asleep? How long?

Long enough.

_Pleased to meet you. Hope you guess my name, oh yeah._

Real. Real. Real.

There was nothing outside her window. 

Kathy went to her church. 

She took a gun.

-

Everywhere, dreams.

A girl, all of ten, dreaming of a rocking chair and love one night, fear and loathing the next. She lived, and she saw the Rocky Mountains, which she’d always wanted to do for real.

A doctor in South Carolina, on the coast, dreaming of deserts and crows, yes, but saw the Walkin’ Dude in a cathedral. She wanted to see if it was there, if it was real, and she went, until she met a very different fate than planned.

One woman and her daughter survived the plague, and the mother dreamed of him and the daughter dreamed of the old woman. They never saw each other again.

Dreams, nightmares, bled together and were impossible to tell apart. He was in Colorado, she was in the desert. He played the guitar and she wore boots. She was young, beautiful and cold, and he was old, wrinkled, and warm.

Renate headed for Nebraska but got caught up with a group that voted to go to Nevada. Yasmin was from Vegas, and never wanted to go back, but had no taste for the mountains. Jolee and Jillian saw him as a politician, hair short and suit crisp. Kronda saw his face and died in her sleep.

“Come,” he said, in one way or another, as a seduction or a threat. And some, many – most – did.

-

But there was Sue.

Sue saw him, in a garden. As a snake.

Sue Stern hated snakes.

She’d used that in icebreakers in college. Now, she was using it as a mantra, something to keep her from losing her mind.

“Sue Stern hates snakes.” She said it aloud, testing her voice. She yelled it next, seeing who might answer back.

A bird twittered in response, probably in agreement. It was satisfying, to hear a bird, not a crow.

But she would fall asleep, try though she might to stay awake. And when she did, oh, he was there, in the grass, among the wildflowers, spoiling the morning dew with a trail of death.

He wrapped around her ankle. “ _Come_ ,” he hissed. “ _Who said you couldn’t eat from the tree?_ ”

A tempter, a bully.

_“Come.”_

But Sue, who hated snakes, stood her ground and stomped the snake from her person.

“No.”

 _No one told him no_. No one shook him off, dismissed him. They cowered, they shook. Some would come later, they would see what was offered elsewhere and show up to kiss his boots like all the others.

“All the others,” he hissed as he bared his fangs.

He struck.

But Sue – and Sue, remember, hated snakes, but she was far from afraid of them – aimed better and ground her own bootheel into his pointed, scaly head.

_“I said no!”_

_-_

_Later_

_-_

“Did I tell you, they want me for the committee?” Sue took a drink of her beer and grinned.

Dayna clapped her friend on the back and returned the grin.

“Of course they do! Who wouldn't? You'll be amazing, you know." 

They'd come so far, and thought separately of those who hadn't made it here. The ones left behind or the ones who just gave up. The ones who went West. There was a bittersweet triumph in sitting here, after everything.

They watched the sun set from Dayna’s porch, and thought of the future. Sue, sleepy, asked Dayna if she could stay, and Dayna got her a blanket.

They had no dreams, not anymore.

-

end


End file.
